How to analyse instagram accounts and learn from influencers

Analysing Instagram accounts and paying attention to the most successful profiles will make a difference in your digital marketing strategy. This technique is known as benchmarking, in this case, focused on a specific social network. These processes will serve to rethink the methodology used and adapt it to the target audience. To perform this analysis it is advisable to have a company profile (Business Account). This account will be synchronised with the tools selected for measurement. They will understand how your efforts are generating traffic to your website. In addition, a series of improvement objectives should be established, changes implemented and their functionality checked.

Once the most effective strategy is known, a refinement should be made. Adjusting efforts to improve ROI is essential to improve marketing campaigns. Instagram offers general statistics that can provide interesting data. It allows you to know the content that has had the most interaction with users, the type of audience, the success of collaborations with influencers or the evolution of engagement. However, analysing other accounts will allow you to obtain information from all perspectives on the social network and detect the strengths or weaknesses of your brand.

Benefits of analysing Instagram accounts

• Evaluate your Instagram account.
• Find out what content your competitors are focusing on.
• Gain insight into the marketing techniques used by successful accounts.
• Improve your marketing strategy.
• Increase ROI.
• Keep your brand up to date.
• Apply creative ideas to your Instagram campaigns.

why analyse Instagram accounts?

To run social media marketing campaigns you need to know your audience. Posting content without analysing your own and other people's data is like walking blind. Checking if your actions are on target will ensure that your efforts are not wasted. Improving performance will help you achieve goals such as reaching a higher number of impressions or followers from your professional profile.

how do you know which accounts to analyse on Instagram?

• Followers: Observing the behaviour of your followers will give you information about their likes and dislikes. You will discover which similar brands they follow and what their interactions with them are. This way, you will know which accounts to analyse.
• Research tags and hashtags: Researching which hashtags are the most used and which brands are present will give you clues about the type of content other companies are using. Depending on the product, you will find certain marketing strategies and which profiles carry them out.
• Monitoring: Once it is clear which hashtags and tags are working, these should be monitored. Using automated marketing tools, you can obtain information about related brands, competitors and potential customers.

KPIs to analyse

Instagram comprises multiple actions to communicate with the audience, so the targets set may vary. For example, for post publications, the most relevant ones are:

• Views: Impressions are the number of times the audience has seen a post, regardless of whether they are followers or other users of the social network.
• Interactions: The engagement of the profile is measured through the interaction of the users. Measuring likes, comments or shares will help to know if the actions are working correctly.

• Reach: To know the reach of a post, we calculate the approximate number of impressions of a user. It is about knowing how many users a publication has reached.

To measure the success of an Instagram account at a general level, the objectives should be:

• Hashtags: Instagram's reach is increased through the use of hashtags, just like on Twitter. The extent to which users use the brand's own hashtag will allow the marketing strategy to be tracked.
• Growth: The recognition of the professional profile will be measured based on the increase or decrease of followers. This is analysed independently of the posts as several factors come into play.

Investing in advertising ensures the success of the marketing campaign. Measuring Instagram Ads will reveal the effectiveness of this strategy. The KPIs are:

• Conversions: The number of conversions generated from ads will be translated into an increase in sales. When a user is interested in an ad and reaches the website to leave their details, a conversion is counted.
• Click Through Rate: The Click Through Rate indicates the number of clicks that an advert has received, and provides an indication of the success of an advertising campaign.

how to measure Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories is a social network tool that allows content to be shared in real time. Three main parameters must be taken into account:

• Rate of impressions: It will be decisive to know how many people have seen the Story. In addition, the frequency with which they have seen it will serve to know how many repetitions by the same user it has.
• Engagement: The interaction of users with the Story will give clues about the content that is most attractive to the audience, i.e. whether they have abandoned the content quickly, skipped Stories or reacted.
• Reach: Shows how many people your Stories have reached. If the brand has a small number of followers, the reach of Stories will be lower.

10 tools to analyse Instagram accounts

1. Iconosquare

One of the platforms for managing and analysing Instagram marketing campaigns. Formerly known as Statigram, it offers the user a dashboard that monitors users' activities with the brand. Daily tracking of followers will identify who interacts most with the content. On the other hand, it will detect errors that cause the loss of followers.

2. Instagram Insights

If you have a company profile, Instagram offers access to a statistics section. Through it, you can obtain data on the brand's followers and the interaction with its content. It allows you to skew the information demographically, by gender or age. This allows you to optimise your marketing campaign and increase user personalisation.

3. Metricool

This is a tool for analysing Instagram accounts, although it also allows you to manage and analyse other social networks. It allows you to monitor several accounts at the same time and make frequent monitoring reports. In its paid version, it offers metrics on engagement, posts and followers. It also performs a ranking of the most successful publications among the target audience, as well as the reach and number of clicks.

4. SEMrush

This tool is well known for optimising the SEO of a website, but it also offers functionalities for an Instagram account. It analyses which spots are best received by users and what type of content competitors use to impact their target audience.

5. Union Metrics

This tool is aimed at marketing agencies. Its use is at a professional level as it offers statistics not only for Instagram, but for all social networks. This wide range of functions allows you to improve your marketing campaigns. A peculiarity of Union Metrics is that it finds out when is the best time to publish and which hashtags are the most appropriate.

6. Socialbakers

The Socialbakers tool is used to analyse Instagram from its most basic aspects. It offers automated reporting, ROI measurement and market research. Its special feature is the possibility to give suggestions on influencer marketing.

7. Plann

The Plann application specialises in Instagram statistics. It focuses on users who want to professionalise their brand. It provides information on the posts on the social network, but also on the colours that are most attractive to users. It is also possible to find out the success of posts on Instagram Stories.

8. Analisa.io

This is an artificial intelligence system that works as a tool for real-time data on your marketing campaign, offering heat maps that indicate trends on the social network, campaigns with influencers, organisational calendars of content and demographic data on followers.

9. Minter.io

This is an application that offers alternative information, i.e. it provides technical information on content marketing decisions. Specifically, it provides information on which filters are suitable for images or how many characters a post should be made up of.

10. Falcon

This tool is aimed at marketers and provides information on user demographics, interaction with content or measuring the success of a campaign.